I think you're talking about this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_discrimination_in_the_Un...
In addition to surname, these are all questions that can be used to gather details about someone’s caste.
Or so I’m told.
Buts it’s funny when we start to care about a tiny portion of the poor people.
First of all, that poll is about discrimination against Indian-Americans (presumably based on race or ethnicity), while TFA is about caste-based discrimination.
Secondly, the option below "major problem" in that poll is "minor problem", there is no in-between. In other words, 90% or Indian-Americans think it isn't a major problem, but over half do think there is a problem.
Most importantly, polling opinions about this is the worst method of determining if discrimination exists. A better method would look at objective measures like salary/job/hiring rate/layoff rate/etc of lower-caste Indians compared to Indians as a whole.
I don’t get this at all. If we treat a group as fairly as possible and on average they perform worse than other groups, is that evidence of discrimination? Is there a hypothesis that they need to perform equally as well.?
The other, much more reasonable explanation, is that these differences are explained by the fact that lower-caste Indians are actually _not_ treated "as fairly as possible" by society.
At the individual level exceptions exist, but when you scale out to sufficiently large populations there aren't random demographics that magically perform worse than everyone else because they're all lazy bums.
Becuase I do not believe an Indian's caste affects their inherent ability to perform IT work. If you do believe that to be true, of course you should expect a difference even in a perfectly fair society.
> Can't some groups perform worse than others by random chance?
This is extremely unlikely once you get to higher sample sizes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers
> Are there really no other factors besides discrimination that could cause this?
Well of course there are. For example, if one group is more educated than the other they're going to perform better.
I made it sound as easy as "just see if the numbers don't match up", but in real life the statisticians that do these kinds of analysis account for other factors that could impact performance, so that if there is a difference it's purely "because" of the caste.
I think nowadays most people use "TFA" (no leading "R") in a fairly benign way, without the aggressive tone of the original.
Don't you think this might have something to do with the representation of low caste Indians in the US, and that they have to be their own advocates? Minorities have to make disproportional noise to get issues that affect them to be heard to the same degree as others. That's just how it is, otherwise our systems would always only advocate for the majority and every single minority would group would be systemically disadvantaged.
At the first level, the Indians who say there’s lots of discrimination against Indians—the folks getting Apu cancelled—get a lot of air time, but aren’t representative. My point is that the same thing may apply to low caste Indians too. The views of this Dalit activist may or may reflect the experience of low caste Indian Americans.
But aren't often those the people who need that sort of representation the most? Even if 90%[0] of Indians aren't discriminated against, the 10% who suffer discrimination absolutely deserve representation and redress.
[0] Apparently 90% of Indian immigrants in the US are high-caste, so funny how that statistic might seem to line up. This of course makes sense, since low-caste people are probably less likely to be able to obtain the education and financial resources necessary to move to a different country.
It's talking about the kind of racism you see on H1B threads here, like the outright confession of violating federal law that I once saw in a comment "I stopped giving interviews to Indians because I found they lie in the resume".
When you engage in activism on behalf of $GROUP you’re affecting the relationship of everyone in the group with the larger society.
On the other hand, if you are successful at being convincing (and loud enough) for a minority community you can achieve a lot of good! LGBTQ+ activists have made the lives of young non-binary folks so much better in just the last 30 years: they are a minority, but they were loud and convincing that "maybe we should treat people equally (e.g. right to marry) even if their sexual proclivities are different from our own!"
Groups that really change the shape of society ultimately have to be loud if they're underrepresented, and make a lot of people uncomfortable. Frederick Douglass was a free black man, which was rare for the time. He used his very minority voice to make a racket that helped propel centuries of social change for the better. Would you prefer he didn't succeed / couldn't have a platform? It's still up to loud minority communities to actually be convincing, after all. All the hate campaigning like those "god hates fags" stuff won't ever get anywhere because it's not convincing to most people.
I disagree with that—the question matters either way. Activism creates conflict, and ordinary members of minority groups may or may not feel like the conflict is justified in comparison to the actual scope of the problem.
Other Indians at Google objected to this activist as being anti-Hindu. At the very least bringing this sort of advocacy into the workplace creates the potential for conflict. Depending on the actual scope of the caste discrimination problem, members of lower castes may or may not feel like the potential for conflict is worthwhile.
A lot of industries are based on the idea of "I don't care if people think they're superior to me as long as they pay me." The savvier ones even exploit this: "I'll get people to think they're superior to others because they pay me" (see: Apple, Rolls Royce, DeBeers, BMW, Louis Vitton, and every other luxury brand). American society is uniquely suited to this sort of mercenary economic climbing, because it brings together lots of people who have no knowledge of each others' previous social hierarchies anyway.
Por que no los dos? This is such a tired take -- how is activism at odds with getting good at what you do and working hard? You can absolutely do both. In fact, some of the most helpful activists are folks who made it and give a helping hand to others (e.g. successful black businessmen teaching other black folks to be successful businessmen; successful women in tech helping other women to succeed in tech).
You do realize that this very "capitalism as the great equalizer" take ignores that being underrepresented / disadvantaged also very negatively affects one's economic prospects. Say I'm a woman -- looking at that rare woman in tech who's overcome many sexist hurdles / gotten lucky enough to make it to the top, are you telling me I should be cool with my odds being shittier?
White folks already love yelling about affirmative action because it lowers your already-low odds so very slightly when it comes to Ivy League college admittance. But you'll tell minorities "shut up just work hard activism is stupid" in the same breath.
> There's a collectivist, political, external-locus-of-control assumption to your point.
First of all, minorities ARE collectives even if we don't all contribute equally to our collective causes. And representation is political because policy shapes how we are treated and what our lives look like. A democracy by design favors the majority, so minorities need to be politically convincing that their needs are important too. It's okay to work hard at this, it's okay to want the world to be more meritocratic.
Frederick Douglass could have lived as a free black person and had a much better life than other black folks in the US. There were other free blacks who did less for the collective. Instead, he gave a crap about activism, and used his education and ability to make a difference. Wasn't that great? Plenty of white folks running plantations at the time were inconvenienced by this guy saying black folks should be free and that slavery is bad, and I'm sure they said "you're free why do you give a damn." But some people do give a damn about the people around them and the world they hand to their progeny.
Not every activist is their minority's Frederick Douglass, but you can certainly be a point along that spectrum of activist, in accordance with your ability and concern. Saying that minorities should be "too busy making money" to give a crap about how their children will be treated is some hot garbage.
> American society is uniquely suited to this sort of mercenary economic climbing, because it brings together lots of people who have no knowledge of each others' previous social hierarchies anyway.
Guess I won't convince you of the many glass/bamboo/whatever the fuck ceilings that exist, but it seems obvious that people are _absolutely_ bringing knowledge of previous social hierarchies. Talk to some {black folks, women} in tech and see what kind of bullshit they have to put up with that you don't have to. How many female founder stories can you find that talk about counterparts assuming something due to their gender? You simply cannot escape social prejudice and hierarchy (oh wait, you can, if you're a white male! maybe this is why you're confused).
It's like how if you ask for a raise, you will probably be denied. If you make yourself invaluable to the business and then threaten to quit, you will get that raise.
Slavery and Frederick Douglass is actually a pretty good example. White Northern factory owners won the Civil War - look at the Gilded Age that followed, and how "industrialized society" is just "society" now. Blacks did not. The Civil War was followed by Reconstruction; which was followed by Jim Crow; which was followed by 50s segregation; which was followed by the Civil Rights era; which was followed by Nixon's criminalization of crack, marijuana, and all drugs that were associated with "Black" culture, which led to the creation of a permanent Black underclass. We are still having this debate 150+ years later.
There's an order to acquiring power, and it goes technological -> economic -> cultural -> political -> military. If you try to skip steps (forcing economic development without technological modernization, or political power without acquiring economic and cultural power, or military power without consolidating political power) you don't get durable gains, and your system collapses after 10-15 years.
And I was one of those minority children that was treated as hot garbage. I haven't forgotten. That's made me a pretty avid observer of which tactics actually lead to durable shifts in power balance, and simply asking for more power is not one of them.
Isn't this all obvious stuff? None of which refutes the idea that activism moves the needle and is _required_ for minorities to equalize how they're treated.
> Time spent developing skills and seizing opportunities will not be, because it can be done in secret, and if you hit roadblocks just go around them and find other people to do business with.
This sounds untethered from reality. Consider being a black kid who wants to be an engineer in silicon valley. Your entire ethnicity is heavily underrepresented, so you don't have role models / might not even view working as an engineer as something attainable. Okay say you get past that and work hard, you still get fewer opportunities because bias is real and there are so many unwritten rules about how to play this game (get an internship at these companies! talk to startups! this is how to leetcode!) -- you find a lot of these things out via your connections. But if your entire network is underrepresented, how do you break in?
This is to say nothing of unconscious biases that affect you as a minority. Less favorable interpretation of your interview results, less insider information about how to play the game, fewer opportunities offered due to prejudice about your potential, pay gap.
If you hit these roadblocks, pray tell how you "just go around them" ??? If your advice is "don't protest, just work hard and be that lucky 1 person who made it to the top for your race/gender/whatever" that's pretty shit advice.
> It's like how if you ask for a raise, you will probably be denied. If you make yourself invaluable to the business and then threaten to quit, you will get that raise.
That's the problem though. You can't make yourself invaluable or succeed in your career if folks don't take risks on you. If folks don't give you opportunities. There is a huge opportunity gap for folks born black, born female, in systems of power that disadvantage them. Participating in activism to rectify this isn't a waste of time -- if it doesn't directly benefit the participants, it benefits their children.
> And I was one of those minority children that was treated as hot garbage. I haven't forgotten. That's made me a pretty avid observer of which tactics actually lead to durable shifts in power balance, and simply asking for more power is not one of them.
Pray tell what tactics you're talking about other than "get lucky and work hard and hope the system is less biased and more meritocratic than you think" because that's all I'm hearing in your comments. What "durable shift in power balance" was achieved as a result of this advice?
Activism has a great track record. Consider LGBT rights in the country 20 years ago vs today. Would gay marriage be possible today if not for the tireless work of activism?
You're folks to essentially shut up and work hard in the unfair systems they were born into. It's just not going to work for most of them. And it's not "asking for more power" -- it's _fighting_ for equal treatment and _exercising_ the power they already have to multiplicative effect.
Maybe your main gripe is that this takes a long time and doesn't generally pay off monetarily or career-wise for individuals, since you have to spend your money and time for the collective?
But instead of calling this stupid and at odds with success, why not be more honest and realize you can do that AND also work really hard and succeed with the opportunities you've been given. The existence of full-time activists doesn't diminish the contributions of folks who contribute in other ways, and that you can contribute in other ways does not render full-time activists unnecessary.
I think to side with your point ... the vocal extremists have the mic.
> If someone drags it here with them they need to understand its their baggage.
If you're a low-caste Indian working in the US, and your high-caste boss discriminates against you, I think you'd feel pretty pissed at someone trying to claim that you're dragging your baggage with you. It's the high-caste boss that's doing the dragging.
The thing that is the issue, again from the little I read, is that such discrimination is brought by other Indians on the Dalit and it's most defyingly bit something they want imported. I didn't figure or yet what is wanted and how but it's not like this is sintering you can blame them for.
Something like 90% of the Indian immigrants in the US are high-caste (big surprise, lower-caste Indians are less likely to be able to get work visas and travel), so of course this is a minority problem. Certainly not all of that 90% wants to perpetuate the caste system here, but I expect it's not easy to be vocal about it. Doesn't make it any less worthy of investigation, though.
Why do you think this is the case despite one of the most active affirmation programs in the world (just search "Reservation in India" on Wikipedia)? Something like 50-60% of seats in colleges and jobs in the government are reserved for lower castes (not a typo, the Wikipedia page should link you to official Indian constitution websites). I am from India and I genuinely don't know the answer myself.
Ofcourse they would. They are mostly those whose parents (or themselves) were privileged enough to make it to the US.
I keep seeing this thrown around, but I am yet to see anyone respond exactly what form this "privilege" takes as it pertains to caste. The Indian constitution was co-written by a very forward thinking Dalit and affirmative action for lower castes is literally written into the Indian constitution. The only "privilege" I know of is that only upper castes can conduct priestly duties etc (at least used to), but I mean cmon that's just clutching at straws...
Even if you have affirmative action, if you feel like you're going to work or school in a hostile environment, this is a disadvantage to you. Psychological safety is one example of a privilege (e.g. women in silicon valley have inherently less psychological safety than men in the workplace because there are more men, and enough of them make unwanted advances with high enough frequency to force them to think about it).
Dalits have to deal with the stress of potentially being treated differently on the basis of their caste. Even if laws say "you can't discriminate," that doesn't change the interactions they have to have. And even if only a small number (let's say 1%) of people are discriminatory, but you go to a school with 300 people, you're now dealing with 3 folks who you're very uncomfortable around and may bully or hurt you. That's still going to suck. Privilege is not having to think about any of that.
Another example is being gay. You might say "well if you're gay and you live in SF, you are worry free!" But at work, school, or even at the grocery store there could be people who harbor discriminatory feelings and even unconcious biases against you, and it can affect how they treat you. If you're straight, you're lucky (privileged) not to have to deal with that. You also are lucky (privileged) that you can visit Alabama without fearing for your life. I mean, unless you're a straight black man and you encounter police in Alabama. Again, your expectations given that situation are a matter of privilege.
The reason folks harp on privilege so much is that privileged folks often say stuff like "X doesn't happen to me or in my proximity, so it doesn't happen ever." But the only way to know it _really_ doesn't happen is to exist as someone who lacks those privileges and to see what that's like. Since we can't do that, everyone argues about the validity of minority folks sharing their personal experiences.
There are also levels to it, as with anything. Within minority groups, there can be folks who have more relative privilege (e.g. black men vs black women, or dalits vs brahmins, or dark skinned vs light skinned black folks). Most people have some privileges relative to other people, so it's good for us to all understand what those things are when we interact with one another. We already do some amount of this very naturally (e.g. unless you're an asshole, you probably won't tell your poor friend to just buy better clothes if you know they are less privileged than you, and you might not expect your female friend to walk to your place through the city at night).
This the discrimination problem -- if you are not in the minority, it is much more difficult to appreciate how common it is.
And yet somehow that makes it not worthy of awareness and fixing? It's a very odd argument to make.
rayiner's comment about 90% of Indian-Americans not thinking discrimination is a big problem is about perceived racism from non-Indian Americans. If you read the link it's about racist Twitter posts about an Indian American by what looks like white folks. No mention of caste. Nothing about internal casteism in the Indian community.
I say this as a HN'er but sorry HN can be just dumb sometimes.
At the very least, it might mean you don’t bring in an activist that antagonizes members of the majority group, as was allegedly the case here.
Activism undertaken on behalf of a minority group affects the relationship between that minority group and society as a whole. All members of the group have a stake in the overall relationship between the group and other groups.
It’s all relative. My mum (in her 80s) is, as they say, “quite fair”. She’s lived in Boston for decades and when I was visiting a couple of weeks ago I could see she was still subject to the usual Boston racism. But I noticed it was mostly older people — ppl my age (50s) or younger were a lot better, and not just because they don’t notice older people.
I got a lot of appearance genes from my white dad so this issue doesn’t come up for me.
Where I live in Palo Alto the kids I interact with don’t appear to care at all and seem to mix pretty indiscriminately, which is great.
I was just visiting a few weeks ago and a couple of my friends told me "it's not as bad as it used to be" but when I asked, admitted it hadn't improved that much from the late 70s/early 80s that we remembered.
Just a casual example: my mum entered her retirement home with some groceries, using her own electronic key, and was told "deliveries are to be made through the service entrance." This to a woman who has been living there for years and whom the "diversity board" keeps trying to recruit (as it's always been 100% white people).
This attitude is deeply rooted. Remember, though Massachusetts was famously abolitionist, its immense wealth started out from funding slave voyages and slave mortgages. And of course the Bay Colony was founded by a shipload of notoriously intolerant people.
In reality, it's probably impossible to understand how big or small a problem caste discrimination really is in context. The folks who don't face any negative experiences mostly aren't going to pipe up.